


Bother Figure Protocol 31

by shishiswordsman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Humor, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Secret Santa, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 23:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17374976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shishiswordsman/pseuds/shishiswordsman
Summary: "Bother Figure Protocol 31?" Tony repeats, incredulous. He glances to Peter in askance, watches with feigned patience as the teenager pretends to play it cool. "You want to tell me something about, kid?""Huh? What?" Peter asks, as though he hadn't been paying attention. Subterfuge really isn’t his strong suit. "What is it, Mr. Stark?"[Secret Santa 2018]





	Bother Figure Protocol 31

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lieselfh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lieselfh/gifts).



> This is my first MCU fic, written for a private secret santa. IT'S SO LATE LIESEL ILY & FORGIVE ME

Tony’s night isn’t half bad, so far.

Pepper’s away at a conference, and the other Avengers — who are out more often than not anyway — are all away for the week. He’s got the Tower almost completely to himself, and he's making the most of it.

Classical music wafts from the speakers that surround the Lab. Tony tinkers with the wirings of Mark L a little, nimble hands working with certainty that’s been built on top of years and years of practice. He’s been building this new suit for a while now, and it’s shaping up to be one of his best yet. Usually he’s interrupted by something or another before he can fully get into the swing of things, but not today. He’s been at it for the past couple of hours, going through five cups of coffee and two screwdrivers in the process.

When he’d started, it had been a little after dinner time, but now light has begun to shine in through the windows. The sun is rising, welcoming a new day. Last time Tony looked at a clock, it was 2.30 am — long before sunrise. He could swear that was only a few minutes ago, but when he looks at the clock now it’s 4.55 am. There’s a slight chance he’s lost track of time.

Oh well. Time for coffee cup number six.

While he’s trying to decide whether to have the coffee black or with creamer, an alert pops up on one of the many screens in the lab. That in itself isn’t really all that unusual — you get used to it over time. Tony has, at least. He pours the cup of coffee, takes a sip while he’s walking back to his desk, and promptly spits it out as he reads the text flashing on his display.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his fist, Tony sputters, “FRIDAY. What is this?”

The AI replies immediately. “I’ve lost contact with Karen, Sir. She hasn’t responded to my pings for the past two hours.”

Tony startles, aiming a glare at the display. “Am I to just assume there’s a good reason for why you haven’t told me about this sooner?”

“I have notified you, Sir — repeatedly, I might add.” FRIDAY sounds insulted, if that’s possible. “Perhaps if you had paid any attention to anything but your work, you would have noticed.”

“Okay, I can definitely deal without the sass, FRIDAY. Remind me to patch that into your software later.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Tony rolls his eyes, allowing himself a second in which is biggest problem is a sassy AI system, and where his protege is unharmed and accounted for. The second passes far too soon.

He inhales the coffee while pulling up Peter’s last known location; some street in Queens. Peter was there two hours ago, based on Karen’s databases, recorded when she was last online. There’s nothing in Peter’s camera feed that’d let Tony know where he was headed; no police reports of major incidents, no tweets or shaky YouTube videos of Spider-Man in some big fight — nothing.

With Karen offline, Tony can’t use her advanced AI and GPS to locate Peter, which means he has no way of contacting the kid. He’s about to reassign some satellites to a five block radius of Peter’s last location, when FRIDAY reminds Tony that phones were invented in 1849, and that they can be still used today. Which, yeah, smart thinking.

When he calls Peter, all he gets is the tone dial. Peter always picks up when Tony calls. Hell, the kid would answer while in the middle of an undercover operation or while sneaking out of a Hydra base — point is, he _always_ picks up.

Unless he’s unconscious, or can’t reach his phone somehow, or worse.

He tries everything in the book, but nothing works; he doesn’t reach Peter, and time is of the essence. If someone’s gotten a hold of the kid and wanted to hide him from the Avengers, they’ve done an idiot-proof job at it.

Thankfully, Tony Stark is not an idiot. After the complete fiasco that was the Vulture plus one downed Stark plane, he installed a tracker on Peter's suit, one that runs completely independent from his suit.

He’s suited up and stepping out of the Tower about two minutes later. As he flies through New York, watching the city that never sleeps wake up to a new dawn, Tony worries. Not that he would admit it, but he can’t stop mentally running through scenarios that might result in the kid’s suit breaking or shutting down. . It’d take someone extremely intelligent to disable Karen — the way Tony’s set her up even _Peter_ can’t shut her off, and that kid’s almost too smart for his own good.

The tracker leads him to Queens, where he finds the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man in a sleepy industrial area, limping away from a some factory. He’s holding his side, and his mask is pulled away from his mouth, a bloody lip catching Tony’s attention almost immediately.

He looks up when he hears Tony’s thrusters, and his eyes widen inside his mask. “Uh, Mr. Stark, hi!”

His suit is dirty, torn here and there. Underneath the tears in the fabric, the kid’s skin is pale and bruised, covered in bloody scrapes. Tony scowls. He waits until his feet hit the ground before speaking.

“FRIDAY’s pissed at you,” he starts. “Can’t say I’m too thrilled about this either. What’s going on, Spider-Boy?”

Peter greets, hesitant. He straightens his spine, forces his hand away from his side, and gives a feeble grin. “Nothing much, I’m all good here. I got into a fight with some drug dealers, but I was just heading home, so it’s all good! All good.”

“Say ‘all good’ one more time and maybe I’ll believe you,” Tony says, voice flat. He examines the teenager once more, noting the exhausted curve of his spine, the way his fingers shake just a little bit. A bruise peeks from under the collar of his suit, shaped like a handprint.

Peter follows his line of sight, and tugs the collar up enough to cover the marks. He chuckles nervously. “All good… What are you doing out here at this time, Mr. Stark?”

“I came here because Karen’s offline,” Tony says sharply. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

"Karen’s been unreachable?" the kid asks, lying. It’s not hard to tell when he lies, because his voice rises at least half a dozen octaves. “She’s working fine for me, so I don’t know about that. That’s so weird.”

Tony closes his eyes, exhales. He grabs onto Peter’s wrist, allowing FRIDAY better access to his suit’s AI. “FRIDAY, try to re-establish communication with Karen, if you can.”

FRIDAY agrees to try, but soon forfeits. “Karen’s communication features have been disabled. The only notable thing I could find in her log is a new protocol, that was only activated some hours ago.”

Peter’s growing exponentially more restless. His earlobes almost show from under his mask, and they’re bright red.

“What protocol?” Tony asks, more from him than FRIDAY.

FRIDAY replies, though. “Logs note it as Bother Figure Protocol 31 — a code that has disabled all vital sign alerts from Karen to me, and has blocked all communications to the outside world.”

"Bother Figure Protocol 31?" Tony repeats, incredulous. He glances to Peter in askance, watches with feigned patience as the teenager pretends to play it cool. "You want to tell me something about, kid?"

"Huh? What?" Peter asks, as though he hadn't been paying attention. Subterfuge really isn’t his strong suit. "What is it, Mr. Stark?"

"I _said,_ would you care to explain to me what the Bother Figure Protocol is, and why it's still keeping Karen from communicating with Friday."

If possible, the kid flusters even more, backing away half a step. The movement must catch on his injuries (not that Tony has any idea of knowing what he's injured because he can't get his damn vitals from Karen), because Peter's arm twitches where he's holding it close to his chest, and he tries and fails to hide the hitch in his breath.

“It’s nothing, must’ve been a glitch or something, Mr. Stark. Maybe some of those guys I fought had an EMP or something, you know, so that’s why she shut down," he blabbers, brand new excuses piling on top of old ones until they threaten to bury the kid underneath him.

Tony sighs. "We have got to work on your poker face, kid. FRIDAY, tell Karen to reinitialize, please."

There's a brief hum as the AIs follow the command — the suit powers down, restarting. Peter stumbles, his hand catching on a trash can. He leans on it, and Tony watches him go through all five stages of oh-shit-I-got-caught.

Step one: _Denial_

"Ah, I fell, silly of me! Really though Mr. Stark, I'm totally fine, so I'll just go home before aunt May gets on my case for being late. You know how she is."

Step two: _Excuses_

"I don’t know what happened to Karen, really. Maybe it was a glitch? Or maybe someone had an EMP or something. Anyway, she was just offline for a moment so it’s no big deal, right?”

Step three: _Bargaining_

"How about I swing by the lab later, so we can see if Karen's okay, yeah? I've got these schematics I think you'd be interested, Mr. Stark, they’re really cool —"

Step four: _Anxiety_

“You’re being super quiet, Mr. Stark. I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing, really, I didn't mean to bother you when you’re busy, and like, I don’t mind walking back myself you can just get back to the Tower and —"

And finally, step five: _Acceptance._

Peter sighs, and Tony can see the moment he accepts defeat. He quirks a brow expectantly.

“Okay, Mr. Stark, _maybe_ we _kinda_ did install that protocol in it, but it’s nothing, really, we we're gonna disable it soon and we must have forgotten and it's really not a big deal at all, Mr. Stark. We just wanted to do an experiment, for science, you know? But maybe I kind of sort of forgot it on and went on patrol and — Okay no I didn’t forget it on, I wanted to test it out, Mr. Stark.”

It’s kind of funny how Peter’s sense of guilt correlates with the amount of times he says the words ‘Mr. Stark’. One time, the kid accidentally broke a solar panel prototype that was worth a couple million dollars, and it got bad. Tony hadn’t kept count (not at first, anyway, but then Nat had started taking bets) but he’d estimate he heard his own name at least a couple hundred times that night.

“— but really, I’m not hurt at all or anything, Mr. Stark, so you didn’t need to come all this way. It’s totally fine, I feel fine, it’s all good.”

What he’s saying is kind of contradicting the giant bruise and smears of blood Tony can see peeking from under his mask.

It’s hard to be angry at him when he’s so goddamn relieved at the same time — there are no Hydra agents in sight, no super villains, no aliens. No real danger. The kid is maybe banged up, bleeding, and bruised, but he’s healthy enough to talk a mile a minute, which is as good as a clean bill of health for someone with a healing factor like Peter’s.

Tony smirks. “Lift up your mask, kid. Prove to me that it’s not hiding at least fifty bruises, and I’ll drop this.”

“No.”

“Lift it up.”

“It’s called a _secret_ identity for a reason, Mr. Stark!” Comes the petulant reply. Peter grins. “I can’t let you know who I really am.”

_“Peter.”_

“I plead the fifth,” the kid’s quick to defend. He fidgets in place, face is still half-hidden under the mask, blood from his broken lip smeared on his teeth and chin. He’s going to have a nasty bruise there in a few hours, and then it’ll be gone by morning.

Healing factors; gotta love ‘em.

“Reinitialization complete.” Karen’s voice says smoothly, then. She sounds pleased.

A lop-sided smirk tugs at the corner of Tony’s mouth, too. “Good,” he says. “Give me —"

“I’m okay, really,” Peter interrupts with some urgency, trying to argue his case one last time, “Seriously! Like, okay, _maybe_ I have like some bruising or something, but it was nothing that bad! It was just some drug dealers, nothing to worry about —”

Tony rolls his eyes. _“Right._ Give me a status on Spider-Man, Karen.”

Karen’s reply is swift and merciless. “Spider-Man is at the corner of Vernon Boulevard and 37th Avenue. Censors register three cracked ribs, elevated heart rate, and a possible minor concussion. Medical assistance is advised, which —” If Karen had a physical form, Tony imagines she’d be side-eyeing Peter right about now, “— I _could_ have alerted for, had my communicators not been tampered with.”

Karen sounds as frustrated with things as Tony is, which is no small feat. Peter’s face falls, and Tony’s smirk widens with the knowledge that he’s won this round.

“Sorry, Karen,” the kid mumbles. The rising sun paints his face in golds and reds, highlighting the bruises that are only beginning to come in and bloom fully. It’s almost sad to look at.

Tony forces his features into a carefully constructed mask of ‘I told you so’. “Okay. So now that that’s out of the way, I want some answers. Why would you turn Karen off?”

The kid at least has the sense to look ashamed. “I didn’t want you to worry, okay? And the Baby Monitor Protocol is really easy to hack into, so me and Ned kinda messed with it, you know; just to see if we could turn outside comms off, and then I wanted to test it out, so I went on patrol and it was just some drug dealers,” Peter explains, almost out of breath after that whole mouthful. “Really, it’s not that big a deal, Mr. Stark.”

Tony’s eyebrows climb higher on his face. “So, let me get this straight. I give you a million-dollar suit that’s specifically _designed_ to keep you from getting concussed and with broken bones, and you turn it off for fun?” He doesn’t mean to sound as waspish as he does, in the end, but maybe some strictness isn’t unneeded. “I told you to use the suit, kid. Use the damn suit.”

Peter pouts, looking very much like a three year old with a stolen cookie. “I get into fights on patrol all the time, I can’t have someone coming after me with a band-aid every time I get a bruise.”

“I’d rather come running with band-aids than not know where or when to run,” Tony says. He means to say it in a caring but admonishing way. Kind of like someone would speak to that aforementioned three year old with a stolen cookie.

Peter doesn’t seem to get the memo. He pushes himself up again, wiping blood from his chin. He looks exhausted.

“Can you yell at me, like, _after_ we get back to the Tower and I eat at least three burgers? I’m starving,” the kid asks him. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but can I stay the night, too, so May doesn’t freak out? She’s already stressing because of what happened with those Hydra guys last week, I don’t want to worry her more, Mr. Stark, please.”

He’s still wearing that hurt puppy look — _how can he even do the Puppy Eyes routine with the mask on?_ — and it’s so hard not to give in to him. The audacity, really; Tony’s far more used to being on the other end of this whole charming-someone-into-giving-you-whatever-you-want thing.

“You win, Spider-Boy,” he concedes, eventually. He pats Peter’s arm, resigned. “Let’s go.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. But I’m still telling May.”

“Oh my god, Mr. Stark, please, _listen,"_ Peter pleads, his voice rising, sharpened with a nigh desperate edge. “It was just some stupid drug dealers, _please —"_

Tony shakes his head. “Shut up and get in the car. Happy should be around the corner.”

Peter gives him a look like the world is ending and Tony’s the reason, and it’s almost powerful enough to sway him. Almost.

They get in the car, and Peter curls into himself, holding his ribs. He keeps trying to hide his winces of pain whenever they drive over a pothole or a speedbump, but Tony notices. He turns the heat up when he sees the teen shiver, and Happy switches on his favourite radio station. They try to be smooth about it, but based on the knowing grin on Peter’s face, they fail miserably.

* * *

Some hours later, when Peter’s lying down on the couch with a cold pack on his face, Tony does some digging. Now that he has access to Karen again — he’s going to have to up her firewalls and safeguards to make sure she’s never hacked again, even though he just knows Peter and Ned are going to take that as a personal challenge — he can peruse her video logs. It doesn’t take long to discover that it wasn’t just _some run of the mill drug dealers_ Peter was fighting earlier _._

No, now Tony’s going to have to yell at him for taking on trained assassins, on top of the whole how about you don’t hack your suit-talk. But that too will have to happen on some other day, when the kid’s all healed up and can’t use the ‘oh-but-I’m-so-hurt-and-so-very-teenaged’ clause to his advantage.

And yeah, _maybe_ Peter’s an annoying smart ass who doesn’t know what’s best for him. Apparently, if you tell that kid not to do something in no unclear terms (like, say, by taking away his super suit and telling him _not to do the damn thing_ ) he takes it as a solid 'okay you can still do it, but in secret this time'. That was really not what Tony had intended.

He groans, watching Peter burrow deeper into the blanket mountain he’s gathered on himself. He needs a new cup of coffee, or if worst comes to worst, maybe even a couple hours of sleep. Or no, scratch that; what he  _really_ needs someone more adult than him to deal with this. He’s definitely calling May in the morning, no matter how much Peter whines about it. Maybe they can tackle this together.

Sheesh. This parenting thing is a lot harder than advertised.

**Author's Note:**

> check out an illustration I did of this on my artblog [by clicking this!](https://shishisart.tumblr.com/post/181905350676/tony-smirks-lift-up-your-mask-kid-prove-to-me) also, check out liesel's irondad blog [here!!](https://weartirondad.tumblr.com/) she runs it with josi, who writes great irondad fics [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/josywbu/pseuds/josywbu)
> 
> alright, that's about all. thanks for reading!


End file.
